Is Your Equipment Built for the Standards of Today?

Is Your Equipment Built for the Standards of Today?

The baking industry has changed dramatically in the last decade. Lines are faster, recipes are cleaner, and expectations for food safety and employee protection are higher than ever. Yet many bakeries are still running equipment that was designed for a different era, and some manufacturers are still relying on legacy design practices that do not reflect current sanitation expectations.

Why Today’s Standards Are Different

Food safety is now a boardroom issue. A single contamination event can ripple through a brand’s reputation, disrupt production, and draw regulatory attention. At the same time, bakers are under pressure to reduce downtime, improve labor efficiency, and protect their workforce.

Sanitary design has moved from “nice to have” to “non negotiable.” That shift is reflected in the ANSI/ASB Z50 series of standards, which cover safety (Z50.1) and sanitation (Z50.2) for commercial bakery equipment. These standards are developed and maintained through a consensus based technical committee that includes bakers, equipment manufacturers, sanitation experts, and engineers.

In other words, Z50.2 is not an abstract rule book. It is the combined voice of the baking industry on what “good” looks like for equipment sanitation.

What ANSI/ASB Z50.2 Expects from Modern Equipment

Z50.2 focuses on hygienic design that supports effective cleaning, reduces harborage points, and protects both workers and products. While the details are technical, the expectations can be summarized in a few practical questions:

• Can surfaces be cleaned quickly and completely, without disassembly that is impractical in a production environment?
• Are welds, joints, and fasteners designed to eliminate niches where product, moisture, or cleaning chemicals can collect?
• Does the design support proper drainage and avoid flat surfaces where water or product can pool?
• Are guards, covers, and enclosures designed so sanitation teams can access the areas behind them?

When equipment design aligns with these expectations, bakers gain measurable benefits: shorter cleaning cycles, less labor, fewer unplanned outages, and lower risk of contamination or recalls.

Legacy Design in a Modern Bakery

Many pieces of legacy equipment were built long before today’s sanitation expectations. Common issues include:

• Hollow framework that is not sealed, allowing moisture and product to enter and remain trapped
• Overlapping or “sandwich” joints that are difficult or impossible to clean
• Hidden belts, rollers, and supports that require extensive teardown to access
• Control boxes, cables, and mounting hardware that create unnecessary harborage points

In real bakeries, these design choices translate into long sanitation shifts, workarounds, and risk. A mixer that requires an extra two hours of cleaning after every run is not just inconvenient. It is lost production, additional labor cost, and a constant exposure to contamination if any step is missed.

When manufacturers carry older design practices into new models, they risk putting new paint on old problems. The equipment may look modern on a trade show floor yet still fall short of what Z50.2 considers acceptable hygienic design.

BEAG’s Role in Turning Standards into Proof

The Bakery Equipment Assessment Group (BEAG) complements the ANSI/ASB Z50 standards by independently certifying equipment conformance to ANSI/ASB Z50.2.

For manufacturers, BEAG certification:

• Demonstrates that equipment has been evaluated against the industry’s recognized sanitation standard
• Differentiates products in competitive bids with a mark of sanitation excellence
• Builds confidence with bakers who want to reduce downtime, improve sanitation, and safeguard their workforce
• Supports alignment with regulatory expectations related to food safety and safe operations

For bakers, seeing the BEAG mark signals that the equipment has been designed and evaluated with modern standards in mind, not just legacy assumptions.

Real World Design Questions for Today’s Manufacturers

If you are designing or updating equipment, Z50.2 can be used as a practical checklist rather than a theoretical document. Consider questions such as:

• Would a sanitation team be able to clean this machine thoroughly within the time window our customers have between shifts?
• Are there any fasteners, supports, or brackets that create unnecessary crevices or shadow areas for cleaning?
• Is every food contact and non food contact surface constructed from appropriate materials that resist corrosion and are compatible with cleaning chemicals?
• Is access to key components intuitive, or does it require tools and partial disassembly that operators are unlikely to perform consistently?
• If this piece of equipment were installed in a high volume bakery, would its design reduce or add to total downtime and labor cost?

These questions align directly with how bakers evaluate new equipment in their own plants. When the answers are positive, manufacturers not only meet the expectations of Z50.2, they also deliver tangible business value to their customers.

Pathways to Certification

Manufacturers have more than one way to align with Z50.2 through BEAG. Some choose to train internal staff to evaluate equipment against the standard and certify designs, while others rely on BEAG experts for independent third party conformance evaluation and formal recognition.

Both approaches move beyond internal claims of “sanitary design” and provide verifiable proof that equipment is built for today’s expectations.